I play poker on Pokerstars. I put about $200 into my account (not a trivial amount for a college student) and have been playing for a few months. I managed to get up to almost $500 before I started losing (FYI: online tournaments are fun, but costly). Through a combination of bad play and a bit of bad luck, I now have exactly $0.18. I’m playing my worst game, limit holdem, trying to make a dollar so that I can play in a no limit game. That’s pretty low. I’ve learned my lesson, and if I don’t rebuld my stack, (gotta stay optomistic!) I’m not reloading.
I knew a guy on Poker Room who turned his last 25 cents into several thousand dollars in the course of 24 hours. Sat at the lowest-level limit game and won enough to buy into a qualifier STT, won a ticket to a larger tournament and won that. The fun part was that he had the orignal quarter left because he’d pulled his bankroll over PR being sonsobitches, so he pulled everything he won off the site immediately too.
They’re tiny. To play in the cheapest (no limit) table takes 1 dollar, and the cheapest limit table takes 1 cent.
And I’m proud to report that after getting down to twelve cents, I had a good run, including quadrupling up with quad 7’s, and am now up to three dollars exactly. The comeback begins!
I forgot to mention my theory for why they allow such low limits: It gets people hooked. And they’ll soon move up to higher limits where the pokerrooms can make some real money.